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Post by murrayc on Aug 1, 2016 9:38:41 GMT
Poassibly one for wilbarra or bridgey. A friend passed on this query: his brother in NZ told him that gypsum is widely used on rosebeds there. Has anyone come across it being used here?
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Post by wilbarra on Aug 2, 2016 10:26:57 GMT
Old plaster taken off walls was a highly prized product among rose growers in the forties and fifties. I spent a lot of time as a kid bashing the plaster to a fine dust so that it could be forked in to the rose beds of the "big house" got the princely sum of two and sixpence a day for doing it, plus a basket of goodies from the kitchen to take home to my mum. As gypsum was, i believe, the main ingredient in plaster, i suppose that was the reason for putting it on the rose beds. Mr Middleton, a radio gardener of the thirties recommends gypsum as a soil conditioner for rose beds in one of his books. Plaster and bricks taken off of bomb sites after the second world war was ground down to dust and sold to nurseries to mix in with the john innes composts
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